Writing Tips for Small Businesses

The need for written content on the web and across marketing channels has placed added demands on small business owners.

Aside from website copy, there is the matter of blogs, social media platforms, newsletters, and promotional content. That’s a lot of writing, but content is valuable for search optimization, conversion, and ultimately branding.

For Small businesses opting to produce their own written content, consider the following tips before embarking on a content strategy.

Find Your Voice

Whether you are drafting a blog post, newsletter, or website copy, your writing style or voice should remain fairly consistent. Finding your voice depends on two main considerations: Who is your audience and who are you?

Make it easier on yourself by being authentic. Think of the core values you seek to project and try to embody those qualities in your writing. Make a list of main qualities; for example, warmth, humor, and technical sophistication. Then, refer back to that list as a guide while writing.

Voice correlates to actual writing style in terms of sentence length, casual language usage, technical verbiage, and many other ways. You will be surprised how much easier it is to write without second-guessing once you have settled on a list of qualities.

Adapt Your Tone

While your voice should be relatively consistent, the tone you employ should vary according to context. For example, your Facebook status updates can be pithy and playful, but you may want a more serious tone when outlining the services you provide on your website.

The key is to be mindful of the needs and expectations of your audience in each context. Your Facebook fans, for example, may not have a pressing need when they see your status update in their newsfeed, but a humorous tone is inline with their expectations and could make your message less salesy or generic.

Put yourself in your readers shoes to determine what is an appropriate tone in your primary channels of communication and create a guideline.

Avoid Keyword Stuffing

Keywords are important and they should inform some of the content used, especially in blog posts and website copy. But, it is important that you always write to satisfy your customers and prospective customers, not search engines.

Google considers the prospective customers who land on your website as software “users” and they have refined their search algorithm to benefit web properties that promote a better a user experience. Keyword stuffing could actually draw a penalty, so avoid it entirely.